Blockchain Technology: The Next Big Thing

Think back to 1993, people were talking about an “information superhighway” that would change the world. The internet.  Few grasped what it really was and how we could see our lives wrapped around it. Three years later Google would be born and following suit, all other products and companies joined the bandwagon to commercialize the internet.  Now it’s hard to imagine life without the internet and our country has truly become a “connected economy”.  It’s the way business is done and how products are moved.  The emergence of blockchain technologies seems awfully reminiscent to the birth of the internet.  It’s caught the attention of the “big four” audit firms and some believe it may be the way to redefine trust in financial institutions after many consumers have been victims of hacks and ransomware incidents.  One reason for that is the entire chain is continually self-updating; hackers would have to breach all computers that contain the ledger in one instance to steal funds or data.  

Originally used for the crypto-currency Bitcoin, the technology has far reaching potential for uses in other areas - security being one of those. Its original use was to track transactions in a secure, trustworthy, and transparent way; that ability has obviously attracted other industries, such as finance and healthcare, who have been targets of increasing malicious cyber-attacks.  In this article from The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, learn the basics of blockchain and how it could potentially push a new revolution in applications.

Technology is one component of securing information.  But a business’ broadband connection is really the first step.  Having a secure and reliable data backbone, particularly when using the public internet is a critical concern for any business. Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions provides a private path that is highly reliable and boasts 99.9999%* reliability. Any information-sharing system is only as credible as the connection that fuels it.  Speed and efficiency are attractive qualities to any business sector but especially those in the financial industry as ledgers and ledgers of transactions have to be moved in a timely manner.  With a strong fiber internet connection, lifecycles of trades and such can go from days to minutes.  Now we see a rise in banks starting to formulate their own version of cryptocurrency, similar to bitcoin, designed to run on the banks own private blockchain. This means the replicated ledger of transactions sits behind the closed walls of the bank, centralized and guarded.  And the frontline protector is going to be the bandwidth provider.  Mediacom Business’ Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions is the latest and greatest delivery mechanism of bandwidth that future proofs financial institutions so they can dive head first into advancements like blockchain technology.